Tag Archives: natural history museum

German and I swung by the Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum last weekend, which was a merry chaos of kids, creepy crawlers and creepy bug enthusiasts. That’s unfair – they weren’t creepy, just really into bugs.To get any feel for the melee, you have to see it. Here are my pics from the event. Speaking of groups you’ve never heard of, these two made an appearance:

Besides the fringe groups, I was struck by the sheer number of vendors dealing in mounted butterflies. Apparently, only the rare butterflies are still captured by daring adventurers stalking them in the jungle (and these butterflies are usually endangered and traded illegally). There are now huge butterfly farms where the prettiest specimens are snapped up and tossed in the freezer right as they emerge from their cocoons, before they have a chance to damage their lovely wings. There’s quite a market for them.

There were also a number of people raising butterflies native to Southern California, including the official state insect – the California dogface butterfly or dog head (Zerene eurydice). Here’s a video of the Dogface’s lifecycle by a guy we met at the event who is also a sound technician. He gets props for being the first person I’ve seen with a sign that says: “As seen on Youtube.” After all, “As seen on TV” is SO 1990.